No reliable method to determine pedophilia, study finds

If you got caught viewing child pornography, would you prefer a prison term or a fat paycheck?

Not a very hard choice.

While the U.S. government is incarcerating some men for decades for just looking at images of naked children, it is paying others not just to peep but to actually fondle the genitals of small children and adults alike.

And lest you think that TSA's employment gurus can protect passengers by weeding out the sexual deviants from the "normal," they cannot.

Pedophilia is the main psychiatric diagnosis applied to sex offenders, and anew study shows that experts have no reliable method for determining its presence.

The study involved a group of Canadian men convicted of sexual offenses against children. Each of the 130 offenders was assessed using three different methods for determining pedophilia:

Phallometry: A device was applied to the men's penises that measured their sexual arousal to images of children. Just over half of the men, 55%, were determined to have pedophilic arousal patterns.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Each man was carefully rated to determine whether he met the diagnostic criteria for Pedophilia in the current edition of this American Psychiatric Association's widely used manual. About 70% of the men met the criteria.

Expert judgment: Expert raters provided opinions as to whether each of the men possessed a sexually deviant interest in children such that they should be categorized as pedophiles. (The study does not provide details on the experts, or the agreement among them.) This method resulted in the highest proportion of the subjects, about 77%, qualifying as pedophiles.

But when the researchers examined their data, they found no significant association between the three methods. In other words, each method identified different men as pedophiles.

Not only that, none of the three methods predicted who would reoffend. Of the 106 subjects who were released into the community, 14 (just under 14%) reoffended sexually over an average time period of about nine years. That is a typical recidivism rate for sex offenders.

One problem is that both lay people and experts alike tend to think of pedophilia as rare, when sexual fantasies and attractions to children are actually fairly common among the general population of non-criminals. In self-report studies, anywhere from about 10% to 62% of men report such fantasies.

The bottom line in the legal context, the researchers said, is that diagnosing someone as a pedophile "clouds" the issue of risk that courts are trying to determine.

Applying the findings to the TSA debacle, there is no way to reliable determine whether any one of those good folks staring at your child's naked body or fondling your breasts or genitals to see if you are a terrorist is getting off.

And criminal history background checks won't help, either, because the broad majority of sex offenses are committed by men who have never been arrested for a previous offense.

"While the U.S. government is incarcerating some men for decades for just looking at pictures of naked children..." This statement is too glib and minimizes the damage done to the children whose images are captured and shared. Child pornography is not a victimless crime. A child cannot legally, emotionally, or cognitively consent to be photographed exposing her genitals, nor can she consent to have her image released on the internet and shared with adult men. The images of child porn I have seen (in connection with my work) usually show the child's face along with full and detailed exposure of genitalia. I seen pictures of preschool-aged girls engaged in intercourse with adult men and images of children having intercourse with animals. While you may disagree that possessing such images makes a man a pedophile, you go too far in suggesting that child pornography is "just" "looking at pictures of naked children," unworthy of serious criminal consequences.

"Applying the findings to the TSA debacle, there is no way to reliable determine whether any one of those good folks staring at your child's naked body or fondling your breasts or genitals to see if you are a terrorist is getting off."
I have to ask, though, what difference does it make? It's the impact on the victim that's more important than anything. It would evidently be preferable that these "good folks" don't enjoy it at all, but if it were between letting pedophiles do it at work in a controlled environment or on their "own time", I'd definitely choose work. However, giving them this opportunity at all may increase their likelihood of committing sexual assault. "Getting off" in-and-of itself isn't a big deal, but the consequences (seeking more stimulation) could be.

I have had Bipolar Disorder for over 40 some years. I have no intrest whatsoever in having sex or a sexual relationship with some minor child/teenagers.
I am soon to be 56. Now introduce me to a single cute 37 to 47 year old who has kept herself nice and fit as I myself have now thats diffrent. I am an Hon. discharged Veteran from the US Navy, and I have to admitt I have abused drugs in my past. So where does that lead towards the speculation of pedophilia being advanced stages of BPD. (I myself want so badley for there to be mandated laws stating that true science that leads to true facts be required for the making of the major majority of criminal laws,no more armchair speculations /monday morning quaterbacks. The major bad to the down and out wrong laws,rules and regulations are caused by and made thru plain stupid and sometimes dumb speculations most of the time being brought on by persons wanting some sort of safety factor due to being scared or afraid or just plain fed up and in hast speculate and in long run these bad speculations cause for bad laws to end up being made.

Here is using modern day science.First:a proper background check, second:Have the examiner highly trained in making proper searchs appear none evasive Third:Have security cameras that are pointed directly at the security examiner during the search and(of course he or she knows of the cameras being there and should there be a possible victim then there are instant replay. I don't think a pedophile or a sex offender is going to want to be shown on instant replay cameras and the likelyhood of some offender working as a security examiner is going to end up being very,very small.
Also, have two security lines one for men with men security personal and one for women and small children and it would also allow for the parent of small or teenage children to decide if they want same sex examiners to search them or not.
this also could be applied towards the scanner monitors as well.
Modesty is a right of any person of any age but, so is the safety of all persons as well.

Pedophiles are not "sexual deviants", biggot. Having a different sexual orientation doesnt make you a "sexual deviant". Who do you think you are to call other people "deviant" just for having a sexual orientation that you do not share?? Damn biggots.

Pedophiles are not "sexual deviants", biggot. Having a different sexual orientation doesnt make you a "sexual deviant". Who do you think you are to call other people "deviant" just for having a sexual orientation that you do not share?? Damn biggots.

Do you think is nice to call other people "sexual deviants" just because they dont fit with your idea of "normality"? Do you think is OK to impose such stigma on people based on their sexual orientation? Would you like to be called a "sexual deviant", a "pervert" just for not being heterosexual attracted to adults? Who do you think you are to impose such stigma on people who havent hurt ANYONE, and whose only 'fault' is to have a sexual orientation they didnt choose??

Do you think is nice to call other people "sexual deviants" just because they dont fit with your idea of "normality"? Do you think is OK to impose such stigma on people based on their sexual orientation? Would you like to be called a "sexual deviant", a "pervert" just for not being heterosexual attracted to adults? Who do you think you are to impose such stigma on people who havent hurt ANYONE, and whose only 'fault' is to have a sexual orientation they didnt choose??

Do you think is nice to call other people "sexual deviants" just because they dont fit with your idea of "normality"? Do you think is OK to impose such stigma on people based on their sexual orientation? Would you like to be called a "sexual deviant", a "pervert" just for not being heterosexual attracted to adults? Who do you think you are to impose such stigma on people who havent hurt ANYONE, and whose only 'fault' is to have a sexual orientation they didnt choose??

Do you think is nice to call other people "sexual deviants" just because they dont fit with your idea of "normality"? Do you think is OK to impose such stigma on people based on their sexual orientation? Would you like to be called a "sexual deviant", a "pervert" just for not being heterosexual attracted to adults? Who do you think you are to impose such stigma on people who havent hurt ANYONE, and whose only 'fault' is to have a sexual orientation they didnt choose??

You seemingly defend ebephilia on your blog. But the same arguments tells you that pedophilia is not a sickness!

"in which special interests promote a pseudoscientific construct that furthers an implicit, instrumental goal."

Why you call Hebephilia a natural, completely normal sexual orientation and pedophilia not? Just because there are fewer pedophiles than hebephiles? Thats hardly a rational reason to call an attraction a "sickness". Because its illegal to act on it?

There is no rational reason to consider pedophilia a perversion, at least no more than to consider hebephilia a perversion.

Do you think is nice to call other people "sexual deviants" just because they dont fit with your idea of "normality"? Do you think is OK to impose such stigma on people based on their sexual orientation? Would you like to be called a "sexual deviant", a "pervert" just for not being heterosexual attracted to adults? Who do you think you are to impose such stigma on people who havent hurt ANYONE, and whose only 'fault' is to have a sexual orientation they didnt choose??

You seemingly defend ebephilia on your blog. But the same arguments tells you that pedophilia is not a sickness!

"in which special interests promote a pseudoscientific construct that furthers an implicit, instrumental goal."

Why you call Hebephilia a natural, completely normal sexual orientation and pedophilia not? Just because there are fewer pedophiles than hebephiles? Thats hardly a rational reason to call an attraction a "sickness". Because its illegal to act on it?

There is no rational reason to consider pedophilia a perversion, at least no more than to consider hebephilia a perversion.

I think the main problems with diagnoses of paraphilia is that the very concept of paraphilia is itself highly contestable.

The concept of paraphilia seems to have arose from out of the social anxieties then prevalent among the European bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century regarding sex and social order. As the pace of social change exponentially quickened due to scientific and technological advances alongside the growth of secular humanism, religion's grip on society (with its theological justifications for the status quo) loosened leading influential people of the day to fear a wholesale breakdown of social order. A 'moral panic' ensued out of which came new ways of enforcing social conformity whose roots were firmly planted in scientific empiricism with its pursuit of objective truth and a corresponding belief in material progress and an increasing reliance on technocratic solutions to social problems. The reasoning went that if the scientific method could reveal truths about the natural world then it could also reveal moral truths too. And it is this flawed and obsolete nineteenth century paradigm or Weltanschauung that psychiatry is stuck with and has yet to grow out of.

In essence, the arbiters of public morality in the twenty-first century are using what is basically a secularisation of Christian morality (with its morbid obsession with sex) but technocratic language of modern psychiatry.